smithers18

Makes me wonder - there are cabs that clearly only have 2 screens on them (main and top), but obviously play the same games as their 3 screen counterparts. I wonder if I'm approaching this wrong and instead I should be informing the game on load that "this is a 2 screen cabinet" and thus it needs to give me the "2 screen variant" of the game?

Many thanks for all this info @fruitsnappa, very helpful. I will look up the names of these machines and see how they look in real life and that may help decode what the configuration is expecting.

Yeah thats what I was hoping for, so I could totally disable the button deck screen in favour of the curved screen incorporating them (the config files suggest support for up to 4 screens, I would want 3 screens rendering on one 'curved' vertical display, that would be perfect). I'm going to fiddle more with the curved options and no doubt I'll find its just something stupid that I've overlooked.

You sound like you're alot more clued up on these machines than me! All I've ever done is lose money in them. I would love to get this screen layout working which is mentioned in the config files as "curved" (I can only assume it is referring to this type of screen setup for "curved" and note the buttons on the bottom of the screen): I also need to think about what game restrictions to apply, i.e. what games might be considered "OK" to support in the emulator and what should definitely be blocked. Is there some sort of line can be drawn using the "3 year rule"? (I know its not a rule as such). I have already been working out how to apply game restrictions using the installer I've built so I have something prepared when I know what restrictions to apply. Any insight on this would be appreciated.

They will have some real buttons too yeah, I just haven't started work on capturing those yet (I can confirm it doesn't respond to normal keyboard presses though, yet). The picture I posted in this thread where I saw a cab in real life didn't look like it had this 3rd control screen, only the 2 screens, and there are conifg options to turn any screen on or off, but some games seem to require screen 3 because their controls are shown on it no matter what, like the game above. Having physical keys to press would work around the issue, but would mean you couldn't play it via touch screen, so I really want both working (on screen control panel and keyboard shortcuts).

Let me share an update on where I'm at with this. So I basically have all of the games mentioned earlier in this post working in this emulator with the exception of 1 (CoptheLot). This is in real play with cash insert, balance deductions, winnings being credited, touch screen working etc. etc. I am stuck with an issue on games that need 3 screens to be able to play them (the reason they need 3 screens is because the 3rd screen contains the controls for start, change stake, exit etc). There are games that can work perfectly fine with only 2 screens because the controls are placed on the main screen, not on the 3rd screen (likely there are other graphics displayed on the bottom screen and perhaps some additional controls that aren't a blocker to general playing). I have been trying to resolve the 3 screen issue but its taking time and every setting I tweak seems to have results that are counter intuitive to what you would expect (e.g. placing the screen on top instead of on the bottom and making it as wide as the other 2 screens!). I wanted to ask if anyone knew how to get round this issue? I know what files need to be tweaked, I just can't find the right setting to keep the game windowed but with 3 screens showing with the correct proportions. See example of the problem below - the screen shown on top should actually be on the bottom, and it should be much more narrow than the other 2 I think? : This is what I think it should look like (quick MSPaint mockup) but can I hell get the config files right:

No worries, cheers.

None of the other games have been tested by me yet, but here is a list of what is in the image (and Worms is there): There are loads of game settings to fiddle with, "Powerplay" and such. Also unsure if the jackpots can be upped from £100? Something to test when I can get other bits and pieces sorted first.

Well prepare to be even more impressed: First game working in demo mode! Still need to sort out the screen to get additional displays showing, but bloody hell I wasn't expecting this tbh! Now I need to work on the credit input I suppose and perhaps keyboard shortcuts.

I realised after I posted above that I can't ignore the screen problem because I need to be able to press the buttons to see what it is doing! Fixed now - I still can't get both screens showing yet but at least that can wait.

I have had some spare time due to poor weather today and I took a completely different approach than using the VM. I am definitely re-inventing the wheel here but I am enjoying the journey at least! So with massive help from ChatGPT (and a much-needed premium subscription!) I have now got the first game "running" in windows 11. I say "running" because thats all it is doing right now, and the screen is off centre (and it looks like its the top screen?), but it is definitely running. See attached a short POC video running natively in Windows 11 (and screenshot below): To cut a long story short there were loads of different executable files in the c:\website folder from the disk image but they all seem to be more to do with; Hiding the windows environment Replacing the shell Launching the initial hardware / software checks on boot Monitoring for tamper protection (it replaces the taskmanager executable with an exe that just displays a warning screen! Also recognises when you change the system shell back to explorer.exe and immediately reverts it and reboots!) ??? Launching the main program <--- it always hangs at this point The approach ChatGPT and I have taken is to run the games directly, avoiding all of the 'real machine' code. This mainly involved first manually converting the 'upe' file into an 'exe' file and then creating a fake server on the correct port for all the commands it is sending out, giving it the responses it is expecting to receive. This was just trial end error and searching for strings to give us clues, all very interesting stuff! I am now parking the screen issue and trying to figure out what inputs it is expecting. Goodness knows if anything will come from this all but ChatGPT seems to think we will crack it! I've got to say I am very impressed with ChatGPT, I have never done any 'coding' of this sort of level, only ever very very low level stuff on a Raspberry Pi or similar. It has literally walked me through it all so I can't exactly take much credit (no pun intended!). Will keep updating as I progress with any 'milestones', if you want to call it that. It might not look like much progress has been made but this is literally weeks worth of work with major support from ChatGPT so I can appreciate how much effort must go in by real developers of the proper emulators! All the best. Screen Recording 2026-05-03 210358.zip

I get what you're saying but was more the point that the machine was really out of place being in the corridor of an Italian restaurant and when it was this very machine I thought it was quite the coincidence! I haven't seen one in the wild for while and they are looking a bit dated now compared to the new fangled machines.

Funny coincidence, I went out for tea tonight and the place randomly had one of these exact machines in it, what are the chances!

I've been tinkering again with the VM and I've managed to enable the keyboard and mouse. It was missing 2 registry entries; hidclass and hidparse and I had to manually enter them back in and also copy over the driver files to system32\drivers. This enabled the keyboard but not the mouse BUT it meant I was then able to load into a command prompt and install the 'guest additions' cd into the VM and finally this enabled the mouse! I had to copy over a cursor icon because they were deleted too but now I have working mouse and keyboard and it only took about 3 days to get it! I am imaging the drive now as I type because I don't want to have to start over from here. Goodness knows if this is all even going to get me anywhere as I still don't know what to do with the '.upe' extension game files (can't find any info on the .upe extension on the web or through chatgpt), but I want to play around with the various gui and lancher .exe files and see if it they are happy to load in the 'expected' windows environment. Something must be taking that '.upe' file and making it executable.

Hi. The settings I posted elsewhere were for MFME, not MVFME. Here are the settings I use for MVFME in GameHub Lite. Make sure you install the runtimes too (i just installed them all): it will also run in Winlator and you can use proper touch screen with that but you always need to navigate through the desktop first to get to the game files (unless I'm missing how to run the exe directly from the app?), and its a pain on my phone screen! Here are my settings for Winlator: